U-Con will give a free entrance badge to anyone who judges at U-Con. In addition, if you judge five slots we’ll give you free tickets to play in two other slots. Due to the number of PFS judges there can/will be we have to GM a minimum of 2 for the free badge.

Alot of the regional or local Cons have a hard time getting event submission in in a timely manner (like good ole Marm Dog 1 & 2 back in the day...). So you often times won't see game sign ups until maybe weeks before the Con is scheduled. Although you'd think they'd have a location nailed down by now.... Last year I was looking to go to U-con but had to pass due to my sister's wedding and I'm pretty sure they did have pre-registration.

Another spot of concern is that last year's awesome prize support came mostly from Doug's personal budget. I don't have Doug's budget unfortunately. So, we need to find a way to supply decent prize support without bankrupting ourselves.

Well, U-Con is being held a month or two after GenCon. I'd say talk to the Paizo people at GenCon. It's always harder to say no in person (especially when you and several others from Michigan are there running slots for them).

For M-Dog we got a Map Pack, a Field guide, and a Inner Sea World Guide. We also got 3 player boons, and a GM boon.

I'm not sure if it would increase for a 3x larger convention.

There is a rumor that Mike Brock may visit us, but he hasn't mentioned it to me yet.

I just heard from U-Con, they can't promise the 8 slot schedule to us until they finish negotiating with the hotel they've picked. If negotiations fall through, they need to find a new location. The reason is, only certain rooms at the hotel are open early/late enough to support a 8 slot schedule.

I will likely spend $50 on miniatures to give away at U-Con. There is a good deal for generic fantasy ones from Megaminis.com which is a Battle Creek company. 20 minis for $25. I will also bring any prizes that I win at Gencon and can't/won't use to give away as prizes.

Another thought I had was to start holding raffles for books, and box sets to raise money for prizes. So, take a beginner box, hold a raffle at $5 a ticket, and sell 7 tickets you've paid for the box, any beyond that and you've got money to spend on extra prizes.

Those are all pretty good ideas. From the thread Mike was posting in about making the rules for prize support black and white, it sounded like he looks at the biggest convention in the region (in this case U-Con for Michigan) and gives them more support than other cons in that region.

So let's see, we're supposed to have about 10-15% prizes, right? 6 people per table, 64 tables, that'd be 38-57 prizes. Yeah, that's a quite a lot, isn't it?

We may throw the dice,
but the Lord determines how they fall.
-Proverbs 16:33 (NLT)

Daniel, I dunno what you've got to work with budget-wise but if there's any way I can help out through my vendors let me know. I hope Paizo is giving you a direct-buy option but I may be able to work some magic, too (I own Game Links in Fowlerville).

I'd love to attend U-Con, but with them holding off any announcements about location and such I'm really not pleased with it. I had a decent time when I attended three years ago, but the move last year prevented me from attending entirely.